


drown the memory

by EssayOfThoughts



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Choking, Drowning, Gen, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-01
Updated: 2018-11-01
Packaged: 2019-08-14 06:13:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16487324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts
Summary: For almost twenty years, Regulus Blackdrowns.





	drown the memory

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TobermorianSass](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TobermorianSass/gifts).
  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [obscuro_2018](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/obscuro_2018) collection. 



> This was inspired by my learning about the substance perfluorocarbon, which is sometimes used in torture as an alternative to waterboarding. It can hold oxygen and, if in the lungs, is just as effective as air in continuing gas exchange with the human body. The downside is that when going into and out of this, it feels like you're drowning and choking.
> 
> In this case, Regulus' body never adjusts to it because its laced with non-perfluorocarbon things to keep his body alive beyond the necessity of air. Thus, no matter how long he spends in the fluid, its _just_ off enough to mess with him.
> 
> And so he drowns. Continually.

He can’t breathe. This liquid - whatever it is - it fills his mouth and his throat, his nose and his lungs and each time he tries, desperately, to gasp for air, he simply chokes down more of it.

It feels like drowning, all over again.

He almost wishes that Voldemort hadn’t pulled him from the pool before the Inferi got him.

 

* * *

 

He doesn’t know where he is. He just knows  _ that _ he is. Somehow he’s not drowning, for all it feels like it. Somehow he’s not dead. Maybe, he thinks, Voldemort has made a horcrux for him somehow, forcing him to live even though by rights he can’t and shouldn’t. But then, Regulus is reasonably sure that one must make one’s own horcrux, and unless someone has interfered with his mind far more than anyone should ever be able to, he’s quite certain he has not.

Besides, a horcrux doesn’t keep your body from dying. It just means that  _ when _ it inevitably does, you can come back. 

Maybe it’s some other nefarious means. His throat aches, but he never yet has tasted blood. Maybe whatever this fluid is is some kind of secret Panacea. Perhaps it is laced with the Elixir of Immortality and Voldemort has finally stolen the Philosopher’s Stone from the Flamels.

Regulus rather hopes that isn’t the case. If it is, then there may well be no way to end the damned man.

Assuming, Regulus supposes, he even is a man after all he’s done to himself.

 

* * *

 

He doesn’t know how long it’s been. He tried counting breaths except he barely takes them anymore. He just floats there, choking on fluid and wishing for death. 

At first measuring time had been easy. Voldemort had pulled him out of it every now and again and demanded of him knowledge. How did he know he had made horcruxes. How did he know what they were. Why had he managed to recognise what the locket was and why he might hide it enough to attempt to break it out of the cavern.

Regulus is lucky. Voldemort does not think Regulus actually succeeded. He had no accomplices, after all. No other human magics passed the cave door. A locket, faint but there, could be seen through the wavering potion in the font on the island. 

Voldemort has always thought too much of men. He never suspected house elves.

He’s answered Voldemort’s questions. There’s no reason not to now. So long as Voldemort doesn’t suspect that Kreacher has destroyed it - and it seems he hasn’t given he hasn’t noticed its gone from the cave. 

Now, Voldemort never takes him out, but sometimes he paces, dimly, just at the edge of Regulus’ sight. Regulus imagines he finds watching the traitor choke for eternity amuses him.

But he doesn’t know the simple, single truth: that the locket is gone. That it will be destroyed, if Kreacher hasn’t managed it already.

Its something Regulus holds onto, in the darkest times when the fluid in his throat chokes him and he tries to cough it out and to breathe air and is reminded once more that he can’t. He can hold onto the fact that Kreacher has the locket, and will destroy it. When his eyes water and his throat aches, when his nose burns and his lungs feel as though they will burst, he holds onto that little hope.

Hope, he remembers, is what Pandora let out of the box to help humankind cope with everything else.

 

* * *

 

He can’t measure time. He doesn’t know if it’s night or day. Voldemort has long-since stopped hauling him out of the tank for torture and interrogation. He’s not seen any of the others since he was placed in it - he assumes Voldemort doesn’t want anyone to know that he was ever betrayed.

Instead, Regulus is left, alone with his thoughts, and his nightmares, until he chokes into sleep and coughs out of it.

It happens every day. Every time he tries to sleep, and is forced to waking.

 

* * *

 

After a while he realises: it’s been far too long since last he saw Voldemort pace. He always saw him dimly, yes, and always just at the brink of what he can see through the fluid and in this dark room but… he had always seen him.

He’s not sure how long it’s been. Several failed sleep-and-waking times, but that, Regulus knows from each time Voldemort pulled him out of the tank to question him, could be anything from four days to a whole week.

And, worse, none of the other Death Eaters know he’s here. If they did, they might at least pull him out to interrogate him. To toy with the traitor. But he’d almost be glad of it - Cousin Bellatrix, he knows, has become far more sadistic than he’d ever dreamed and he knows exactly how to prod her into giving up her wand.

If they knew he was here, he would have a hope of getting out. Of freedom. Of a  _ life. _

No such damned luck.

 

* * *

 

He breathes. He chokes. He tries to just swallow the fluid down. Maybe, he thinks, if his body processes enough of it, he’ll suffocate and die at last, as he  _ should _ rather than stay here.

He doesn’t know how it hasn’t killed him yet. It can keep him in all the air he needs while making him feel like there’s none, but surely he should starve?

Maybe it’s laced with potions. Nutrient ones, or those strange supplement ones intended for sickly babies. Maybe it truly is laced with Panacea or the Elixir of Life, though Regulus doubts the latter - if Voldemort had that he’d have won and if he’d won, Regulus doesn’t doubt that he’d be hauled out of the tank and taunted at his betrayal in the face of Voldemort’s victory.

He really has no idea how long it’s been. He’s not entirely sure he wants to know.

 

* * *

 

“-ey, whats-”

“‘S tha-”

He can’t hear clearly. Whatever the fluid is its in his ears and he can’t overhear much.

But something, some _ one _ is just beyond the tank. 

He tries to move his arms, but after however long it is he’s spent in this tank, the muscles are atrophied.

_ Fool, _ he thinks.  _ You should have tried to exercise. _

“‘S a corp- -oudfo-”

Words popping in and out like the wireless through static. 

_ Thunkthunk _

His eyes blink open, and the man on the other side of the glass trips backwards in shock.

He hears the next words with altogether too much clarity.

“Savage! Get him out!”

And then the whole tank careens over, spilling fluid as it goes.

 

* * *

 

“Breathe,” the Auror says. “Its ok. Its ok. You’re safe now. Breathe.”

Regulus coughs and chokes and retches up all the fluid that he can. He thinks he may never be entirely free of it.

“I’m Michael Proudfoot. This is Serena Savage. We’re Aurors under Kingsley Shacklebolt. Can you tell us who you are?”

“‘ow-” Regulus manages to get out. “‘ow long?”

“It’s the 23rd of May,” Proudfoot says. 

That had only been a week or two away when Voldemort had found him. That can’t be right. 

“Y-Year?”

“1998.”

Regulus’ eyes go wide open.

“The  _ fuck.” _

“Sir, can you tell us who you are?” Proudfoot’s voice is soft but insistent. “Or when you were captured?”

“‘79,” Regulus manages. “Nineteen- _ fucking _ -seventy-nine. And my name is Regulus Black.”

* * *

 


End file.
